


And then rectitude and other impossible things

by StAnni



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Break Up, Complicated Relationships, Infidelity, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2020-01-12 02:44:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18437399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StAnni/pseuds/StAnni
Summary: When the big things break a repairer of small objects is just, to be perfectly honest, not the guy you call.  Even if he really, really wants to help.  You don’t ask the guy who can mend a fucking tea-cup to put a heart back together, to put a life back together.  Especially if he was the one who shattered it.





	And then rectitude and other impossible things

Margo, who has not spoken to him since he left, hails him closer with a quick wave as he arrives in the hotel lobby. 

She is on her cell and when it is clear that he is making his way towards her, her attention focuses back on the call. He waits a full minute for her to finish her conversation before she turns back to him, with a stiff, fake smile and takes him in. “Q. Look at you. It’s been a minute.”

“I can’t stay long.” He says by way of an answer, evenly – but thoroughly aware that he hasn’t even been in Margo’s presence for five seconds and the mood has been set.

“So it’s a drive-by deal for you?” She asks, almost tiredly – maybe even disappointed, and he braces himself before he nods.

Her eyes widen slightly, yes, disappointment. It stings. “We’re meeting in the Blue board room. It’s on the fifth floor. I’m waiting for Kady. The others are all in there.”

*

When he pushes the heavy wood inward to the board room, Eliot is there. 

And no one else. 

Eliot doesn’t react by blinking away, almost stumbling, shoving his hands in pockets like he does. 

Because it is Eliot he receives a guarded nod, and quiet “Hey Q.”

“Hey El.” He manages and moves around to the other side of the heavy wooden table where Eliot watches him for a few seconds with quiet eyes and then sits down at the board room table, leaning back in his chair in a move that is so familiarly Eliot that Quentin feels his heart clench tight.

“You know who else is coming?” Quentin tries and Eliot pauses, takes a telling second to answer and then shrugs, his voice clipped “No idea.”

*

Six months ago, roughly, Quentin picked up the last of his things from the apartment that he shared with Eliot and, at that point, Margo. 

Their room, his and Eliot’s room, looked strange, like some sort of shattered version of itself – there was still the top drawer in the dresser, a little crooked from the time that they had a quick, rough fuck up against it before Quentin had to open the bookstore. 

There was still the faded paint splatter on the bedpost from where Margo convinced them to paint the room dove grey, and all three of them were too lazy to take the bed out of the room entirely. 

There was still the crack in the standing mirror from where Eliot slammed his palm against it – the bitter pain imprinted there.

In the living room, Margo had watched him in blaring quiet as he filled his backpack with the final odds and ends, until he had enough and looked at her with exasperation, letting his arms fall to his side. 

“What, Margo? What do you want me to do?”

“I dunno, Q. Try? At least.” She said, and it wasn’t unkind or laced with any venomous undertone. It was sincere. It was a plea.

He shook his head at her and shoved the last few books carelessly into place. “It’s not that simple.”  
And it was only a half truth, he knew – but she didn’t have the full picture to compare it against. 

“It’s over, Margo. It just is.” He said as he dropped the keys in front of her on the kitchen table. 

*

To know someone for a lifetime and a minute is a weighty thing – a thing of responsibility. 

As they wait in silence for whoever comes next to arrive, Eliot gazes into the soft light of his phone and his eyes, lit with whatever fucking hook-up app he’s swiping, is still warm dark rust, spiced and inviting – even when they are turned away from him. Quentin braces against that old, trite frustration - that useless entitlement, rising like a dragon under his bones. And before he can stop his fucking mouth from saying the fucking words “That’s quite a few left swipes.”

To know someone for a lifetime is to know that you don’t really know them.

Eliot, to his credit, gives an apologetic smirk, swipes left another two times, and then slips the phone back into his pocket. “Sorry, it’s rude.” 

Quentin blinks away, already exhausted and it’s not even 10 AM. “This is ridiculous, do you know what this is about?” Quentin sighs, running his hands over his face. Suddenly he feels very aware that he didn’t shave properly, that his sweater is the very same sweater that Eliot made him promise to throw out – but that he hid in a crumple bundle at the back of the closet. 

Eliot shrugs, lightly – laissez –faire but walled to the hilt, and with a sigh, not heavy and ugly like his own “It was all very cryptic. I just knew I had to be here.” And he adds with a smile, the fond smile he reserves exclusively for Margo “Under threat of death.”

To that Quentin nods – because – been there and examines his hands, the ease seeping into his bones slowly “You guys still living at the…” Eliot stops him, quietly “No, I left a few months ago.” And then, because everything about Eliot is subtly devastating “I mean I left…too.”

*

On the day that they moved in together, into that apartment that they found together after weeks of following estate agents in and out of doorways through the city, they had gotten blind drunk after the house-warming/unpacking/people-bumping-into-boxes party and laid down their jackets on the floor as they stared up at the ceiling.

“This is good.” Eliot had said, serene and perfect.

It came from somewhere inside of him, somewhere childish, idiotic, but true. “Should you die, I will raise the roots of all the forests with my grief, I will unearth the earth and boil the oceans.”

Eliot shook apart in laughter and, out of breath, looked over at him – eyebrows raised in amusement “You’re so romantic.”

Their giggles and slurs turned into kisses and Quentin gripped the side of the kitchen counter for purchase as Eliot pushed himself inside of Quentin, deep and achingly slow. That first thing in that apartment, that they found together, had been like the first time they fucked in the cottage in Fillory. It was as if a beautiful circle had finally closed itself around them and Quentin took every thrust and every moan as a blessing.

*

“How is the store?” Eliot asks in that cool, yet polite way, that makes Quentin’s stomach knot now, now that he is on the other side of it. “Okay.” Quentin non-answers and returns the enquiry “How’s the…um, analysing…” He doesn’t mean it to sound as dis-interested as he does. But he just has never had, and never will have, an appetite for politics. Eliot doesn’t take it the wrong way, which is a relief as good as a win, and smiles, a genuine smile – though plainly supressed – and shakes his head, as if not to bore Quentin “It’s fine, it’s good.”

And then it is “So, how’s your mother?” and Quentin now has to smile as well. Eliot, in fact, does get along with Quentin’s mother, strangely enough. “Like steel wool.” to which Eliot actually does chuckle and the sound is like cool water on a burn. “Yeah, well, at least she still buys your clothes for you.” Eliot teases and Quentin, maybe out of habit, maybe because the air doesn’t seem as thick as it was before, volleys “I mean, she needs something to lay out for me every morning.” And when Eliot chuckles again Quentin can’t stop a short laugh to follow.

It feels strange, laughing. Like the seams are coming out at the edges of his heart. It feels good and it feels terrible at the same time.

And then it just feels terrible when Eliot finally, looking at his hands folded on his knee – foot resting quietly on the seat of the next chair, asks “And Alice?”

Quentin’s heart stutters quietly, evenly to a stop.

At the spidering of wards that scatter swiftly down the walls they both lean back with defeated groans.

“Fucking Margo.”

*

The mirror cracked under the force of Eliot’s palm and left a cut across the pale flesh. 

The volatile anger drained out of the room in an instant and was replaced by something heavier, more sombre. Something that never went away again.

Quentin scrambled forward, the nightmare momentarily forgotten, and yanked Eliot’s bloody hand towards him. “Fuck, El, this is deep…”

And Eliot, still angry, pulled his hand from Quentin’s, shook his head. His voice was tired and he looked broken. Quentin always knew how to break things. 

“I fucking called this.”

*

Margot has sealed the room with wards that Quentin has never even seen before. She’s nothing if not the king of conviction.

“Fuck this.” Eliot says, and the irritation is real there. 

Quentin looks away. The room feels small and cold.

*

In a park, on a Friday, Alice was waiting for him under a tree. 

She was an Alice he knew must have existed some time before he came along. Relaxed, almost happy - she gave him a hug that smelled of peonies and rain.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d come” She said, voice still tight, but lighter than before.

Like Eliot she had her own orbit and being with her felt a little like driving too fast in a car at night. 

Margo had said it would be a mistake, going to the park - that she wasn’t going to tell Eliot because she was just going to assume Quentin wouldn’t be as ball-sack stupid to willingly engage in such a blatant, colossal, fuck-up with open eyes.

“So, how are you Q?” Alice asked as they stood too close to each other in park, on a Friday, under a tree.

And it didn’t feel like a mistake. It felt familiar and at the same time maybe just a little bit new. It felt like an open flame – exciting, like the adventures from another life.

*

Quentin notices that Eliot’s top button of his impeccable Trumaker shirt is missing and that, for his composure and poise – there is a slight tremor in his hand when he snaps out his phone again, muttering under his breath “Answer your fucking phone, Bambi…”

*

And in fact, it wasn’t a mistake.

Mistakes aren’t planned or concocted with lies zig-zagging around them.

Mistakes aren’t phonecalls made crouched on Alice’s balcony – quick messages under a cupped hand “Sorry, El, we have stocktake tonight. I’m gonna be late”

“Sorry, El, I have to drive so-and-so home because of so-and-so”. 

“Sorry, El, this and that and the other.”

Mistakes are honest.

It was no mistake.

*

“I don’t even know why she would do this, she hates Lindsay Lohan.” Eliot shakes his head, trying Margo for the umpteenth time on his phone.

“Can you get through?” He snaps, antsy, and Quentin shakes his head no, phone in hand.  
He hasn’t tried though - doesn’t need to. 

If Margo wants to parent trap then then they are fully fucking parent trapped.

“I mean what the fuck? How will she even know to let us out?” Eliot asks the room and no one in particular – especially not Quentin , who is the last to have any insight into the particular psychopathy that is Margo. 

But he tries, anyway, “It could be a puzzle, or a riddle – the wards clicked into place when you mentioned, you know.” 

Eliot’s eyes are, for the first time, unkind, withering “What you can’t say her name all of a sudden?” 

“Alice.” Quentin gives in, tiredly and Eliot, rolling his eyes, turns away and tries to unlock the wards in increasingly frustrated movements. 

“So we could just say, you know, things that Margo may want us to say.”  
Quentin tries, again.

Eliot drops his hands, and when he turns back to Quentin he is genuinely at a loss, shaking his head. “She’s not that stupid. But whatever, let’s just get all the shitty ideas out of the way.”

So they say the words.  
“I am sorry, Eliot.” and “I forgive you, Quentin” and “I love you.” “I love you.” “I love you” “I love you” so many times that the words become nothing and the pain, and shame and hurt sort of just combines into this sickening tightness around his heart – a screw turning and turning and turning.  
Until he throws up his hands in Eliot’s mid “I lo…”.  
“Okay, no. Stop. STOP.”

The world is unbearably bright outside the windows. There is no other way out of this room.

“We’re going to have to talk.”

*

For a while, a good few weeks, Quentin even fooled himself into thinking that Eliot would be fine with it if he ever found out, that he would maybe even think it’s hot. Or hilarious. Or just whatever.

At the beginning he was going to confess - he certainly wasn’t going to look for reasons not to. He wasn’t going to grab onto any old fight, or argument or just a bad day to justify his actions.

And when Eliot went on his knees in front of him in the bedroom – his hands quick and skilled and his mouth heaven – he wasn’t going to tell himself that maybe he just deserved this – that he had gone through hell to be rewarded with the love of these two people.

Or that maybe he did deserve this, yes, as punishment – that he was meant to eventually fuck this up too. And that there was really nothing to be done about it.

He wasn’t going to tell himself all the those terrible thoughts, crawling under his skin.

*

“Fine.” Eliot breathes, looking as defeated as Quentin feels. And he sits down, elbows on his knees this time. And for the first time Quentin can see the crease in his bespoke slacks. He can see the strain in Eliot’s shoulders, that he needs some sun. He can see consequences.

Eliot glances up at him, and waves his hand tiredly – indicating for Quentin to sit on the chair nearby. 

“But it’s not going to change anything.”

*

When he told Julia, because he had to, because the world came crashing down, because he needed sanctuary, she had stared at him –in such silent, disappointed shock that he felt his stomach fall. “Oh, Q…” 

*

So he sits down and Eliot’s cologne is like a spell, still. He braces against it, leans back, and starts.

“I went to meet Alice.”

*

The night it all went to hell he came home late, like past mid-night late – like no explanation could possibly work late. 

The light in the bedroom was still on and he slipped inside, pulling of his jacket, frantically trying to think up some excuse, some lie that he hadn’t used before.

But he stopped when he saw Eliot sitting on the side of the bed – still in his suit, looking like he was heading out for some rally any moment.

“It’s pretty late, Q” Eliot said, even. Blank. And looked up at him with those eyes, amber in the bedroom light.

Before Quentin could answer Eliot just came out and asked him, asked him point blank, with this heart-breaking lilt of hope, of I’m-crazy-right? - “Are you seeing someone else?” 

And it collapsed, everything, right there.

*  
“It isn’t scenery, Q, with Eliot. ” Julia had said, her fighting spirit – her belief so raw and bright. “It is hard fought-for and hard-fucking-won, the two of you.” 

Across from Julia, the painful tangle of his sins overcame him, pushed him to the undertow – pulled in and away.

“It’s over, Jules. There’s nothing left.” 

*

It hangs there, the hard truth – out in the open. And in the harsh light of day it is sharp and full of hooks, so ugly when unravelled. Exposed.

Eliot’s eyes are like glass, looking in – but also unwaveringly focused on him, on his unshaven face and disgusting sweater. 

Silence.

In Fillory they had had silences too. And those those silences could stretch for hours, sometimes days. They had angry silences, jealous silences, bad, bad silences, and they were all fucking horrendous.  
But they were not un-navigable, Those silences could be swum through, fought through, lived through. 

“Please talk to me.”  
Quentin finally says, because there is really, honestly, nothing else that is left to say. 

“You can say anything. Ask anything. Anything.”

*

A year ago they were having dinner with his mother, Lady steel wool. And it was, just as he expected, horrible beyond comprehension.

But Eliot took his hand, right out there on the table and squeezed it, at just the right time and just hard enough.

*

“I want to know how it was so easy for you to hurt me, when it is impossible for me to hurt you.”

*

Sunday mornings Eliot would, almost every Sunday morning, turn over and with a smirk into Quentin’s neck, breathing in and out, deep and hot. His cock thick and hard against Quentin’s thigh.  
He’d whisper “Delicious” and Quentin would groan, either pushing him away in jest or pulling him closer in hunger. 

*

When the big things break a repairer of small objects is just, to be perfectly honest, not the guy you call. Even if he really, really wants to help. You don’t ask the guy who can mend a fucking tea-cup to put a heart back together, to put a life back together. Especially if he was the one who shattered it.

“I didn’t…” He starts but falters, because how do you point to an apocalypse and just go, “I didn’t mean to.”

“I wish that we could go back there.” He says. Because he does. Every day. “Just us. To our house in Fillory, and I could have a lifetime to atone.”

“I don’t want you to “atone”” Eliot says with a huff of frustration, sarcasm snared around Quentin’s turn of phrase and running his hand through his hair, which is just a little bit too long he looks away, eyes softer and the hurt there so deep that it pulls Quentin down with it. “I don’t want to forgive you, Q.”

And he doesn’t sound angry, just dull - honest. 

“Because this is unforgivable.”

They find themselves each standing on the other side of a wall that is impossibly high, impossibly thick. Impossible.

Not all things end well and they don’t always find a way.

The wards shatter quietly around them.


End file.
